


praying

by yum_cy



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (but also not? i tried but i got kinda off track), Art-Lover Nile Freeman, Author is not Christian, Bisexual Nile Freeman, Canon-Typical Character Death, Character Study, Character Study Through Religion, Gen, Nile Freeman-centric, Poetic, Religion, fuck the military all my homies hate the military, i mess with tense or maybe it was an accident but i'll never admit it, this isnt funny but i cant be serious in the tags, though the time period changes are intentional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25861921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yum_cy/pseuds/yum_cy
Summary: She prays at night, forehead pressed against knees in the dark, tears dripping onto her pillow. Andy sleeps on the couch, her neck bent stiffly. Nile begs and begs and begs until her throat hurts. She doesn’t know if He heard. She’s pretty sure Andy did.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57





	praying

She’s praying again: torso bent over knees, cross making imprints on the calloused skin of her hands. She feels small here, under stars and clouds, twisting branches and drooping leaves. It gets dark earlier now, cold air sharp against her skin. Fall is coming on the breeze, sweeping away the oppressive heat she’d felt back in England. Fall feels appropriate, swooping in her stomach and burning cheeks. She remembers her arms wrapped around a couple million dollars stuffed in a suit, wind on her scalp and bones snapping against warped metal. She remembers Andy’s smile and Joe’s blood matted curls.

Her mother took her to church every Sunday morning, wearing clothes that made her skin itch and hair ribbons that tickled against her neck. She’d already known every word coming out of the pastor’s mouth, knew the lessons she’d been hearing her entire life. She used to believe. She didn’t know any different.

Italy had always been warm in her mind, watercolour landscapes and wine sweetened air only rich brats got to taste on summer vacation. She tried so hard not to be jealous of them, to be grateful for her little home in Chicago and two day vacations to her aunt’s place in Atlanta. To let it drip down her throat, savor it on her tongue. It tasted like the metal of her father’s dog tags and her mom’s sweat after two eight hour shifts, her brother’s hair cream and communion wafers.

Middle school ends with sobbed prayers, her face pressed into a tear-soaked pillow. Her father is dead and she looks at her brother’s girlfriend like she was made of flowers. The pastor says life never truly ends. The pastor says everything happens for a reason. The pastor says she is guilty of some crime Nile didn’t know how to stop committing. She stops believing any of it is true.

Her prayers are silent, pleading the way she did after the first real taste of action she got. There’s blood in her mouth and it tastes like wine and Communion wafers. There’s blood in her mouth and her hands chafe where she presses them together.

Nicky’s voice shakes on prayers in a language she doesn’t know, hands clasped tight and shaking. He sobs and looks at Joe like there are nails through his hands. He sobs and looks at his sword like it’s the same as the cross. 

They sit next to each other when they’ve forgotten where the Sun’s gone and cling to whatever they have left.

Highschool comes and goes with friends she should’ve chosen better and friends she could’ve treated better. Highschool comes and goes with an anger that shakes her to the bone, nails bloody from clinging to the rage that kept her standing and the grades her mother kept pushing. She barely passes her art classes, but her hands are coated in clay and her Mom’s bible is stained with paint.

(Her statues are leaning, lopsided and lumpy. She smashes them in an alley with a scream and begs the God she hasn’t believed in for years. She enlists the next morning, mind on the bills Mom struggles to pay and the colleges that didn’t accept her. She leaves her Dad’s dog tags around her brother’s neck and tries not to curse at her commanding officer.)

Andy cuts her hand while trying to cook. It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. Joe cries while he puts on the band aid. Nile laughs it off and Andy’s shoulders stop trying to press into her ears. She prays at night, forehead pressed against knees in the dark, tears dripping onto her pillow. Andy sleeps on the couch, her neck bent stiffly. Nile begs and begs and begs until her throat hurts. She doesn’t know if He heard. She’s pretty sure Andy did.

Nile didn’t know death like this. She hasn’t been in many fights, despite what the shows and movies and documentaries make it seem like, she’s mostly just sitting around. It all seemed so pointless, the blood on her hands and on the ground and sloshing between her ears. She’d known it before, when her dad came home in a body bag with an impersonal _I’m sorry for your loss_ and they kept sending people anyway. It was all money and pushing someone down enough that they forget to get up. She hated the gun in her hands. She hated the sobs she heard in the night. She hated the colleges she couldn’t pay for.

She prayed, before the Sun came up and she had to get to work. She prayed for the children who scrambled away when they saw her team coming. She prayed for the gutters filled with blood and the things she couldn’t think about out of her nightmares. She prayed and cursed the stupid flag that always hung over her head.

Her aunt’s place in Atlanta had always seemed like it belonged in a movie. It wasn’t large or fancy; in fact, it was quite the opposite. A squat house crouching on the edge of the beach, where the sand ran into grass like shattered grass. The walls were sun-faded and salt-water eroded. The screened porch is listing to the left and the blue-white-blue paint is chipping. Flaking. Nile remembers running her hands along it, palms coming away speckled with color and dirt.

She chokes and sputters and feels the bones in her hands splinter and wakes up with salt on her lips. Her hands are blood spattered when she folds them to pray. Her hands are too tired to hold together, bones and tendons spilling out of the leaks in her skins. Andy smiles the next morning, campfire and gardens wrapped around the edges. Nile can see what Quynh ws fighting for.

She’s praying again: heavy hands pressed against tired eyes, throat closed up tight. Joe is teaching her how to draw now, hands moving slow enough that she can copy his movements. It’s slow going, but she refuses to quit. She wants to sculpt, push her hands into the clay and shift it, mold it, until it becomes something new. It reminds her of the stories a pastor used to tell on boring Sunday mornings about people formed from dirt and earth and the breath that must have felt more like a breeze. Nile calls Booker on a Sunday morning, phone pressed against her ear, fingers curled around her cross.

“You made those fake statues by hand, right?”

**Author's Note:**

> im jewish :)
> 
> (please leave a comment. it really helps me keep writing.)


End file.
